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GHOSTS OF SHRIEK SHOWS PAST

Posted on September 9, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 – MIDNIGHT: 555
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9 – MIDNIGHT: THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 – MIDNIGHT: HEADLESS EYES
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 – MIDNIGHT: MARLEY’S REVENGE: THE MONSTER MOVIE

Since the dawn of time, Spectacle has long been carried on the backs of many a supporter. It’s kind of like that poem Footprints that hung in your grandma’s dorm room. Or better yet, it’s like an ant farm. A cool ass ant farm that shows the best movies you’ve ever seen. To be blunt–Spectacle wouldn’t and couldn’t exist without the often jaw-dropping amount of love we receive from filmmakers, distributors, cinephiles, and (of course) our audience.

In 2011, we held our first ever horror marathon (and last ever sci-fi marathon). Over the course of the next 4 years the marathon would play host to some incredible titles both old and new while laying waste to brains both old and new. Whether you stopped by for the full 12 (sometimes 14) hours or just came for one movie (or maybe you’re the those two dudes who showed up at 2am after the first one who thought it started at midnight instead of noon)–we say thank you.

To celebrate half a decade of marathons we present GHOSTS OF SHRIEK SHOWS PAST. The following titles are hand picked one from each past year to lead into The Fifth Annual Spectacle Shriek Show this year on October 24th. Without the generosity, kindness, and confidence of the following presenters (and others too numerous to cover in this brief post) we wouldn’t be where we are today.

South Third Street Forever.

Massacre Video presents: 555
Dir. Wally Koz, 1988.
90 min, USA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 – MIDNIGHT

From The First Annual Spectacle Shriek Show. (2011)

A hippie killer with a sex-fueled, murderous bloodlust is on a rampage and he’s brutally murdering innocent young couples! A nationwide trend of killings with the same m.o. happens to catch the eyes of Detective Haller and Sergeant Connor. Every five years, within five days of each other, the killer strikes! Now it’s up to Haller and Connor to find out who is behind these grisly murders. Who is this crazed, blood thirsty hippie? And more importantly, what is the significance of the third ‘five’?

Written by Roy Koz and directed by Wally Koz, this rare SOV splatter-classic has recently been given the royal treatment by Massacre Video with a DVD, special edition DVD, and an already eBay fodder clamshell.

Lunchmeat VHS Fanzine presents: THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS
Dir. T.L.P. Swicegood, 1966.
63 min, USA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9 – MIDNIGHT

From The Spectacle Shriek Show II. (2012)

Two degenerate café owners cook up a depraved alliance with a demented Undertaker and run amok through town on their motorcycles, hacking up hot dames and cleaving craniums. Select portions of the corpses are served up as daily specials at the café and The Undertaker gets to bury the leftovers. But when a pair of local detectives smell something fishy afoot, the trio’s reign of terror runs into some trouble.

One of Lunchmeat Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Josh Schafer’s all-time favorite flicks, this pioneering pitch black comedy is a kitschy slice of pure drive-in delirium that plants its tongue firmly in cheek, then bites it off and spits it out onto a sizzling hot plate ready for you to enjoy. Once you’ve ingested the wacky slab o’ cinema cheeze that is THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS, you’ll never get the taste out of your mouth!

Dig it!

Spectacle Midnights presents: HEADLESS EYES
Dir. Kent Bateman, 1971.
78 min, USA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 – MIDNIGHT

From The Third Annual Spectacle Shriek Show. (2013)

You know how it is for starving artists, right? I mean, look at your clothes. Anyway, it used to be even harder! So hard that some of them turned to a life of crime. This is especially true in the case of Arthur Malcolm. Down on his luck, Arthur is caught robbing an apartment and loses his eye in the process. Once he’s healed he’s out on the streets and, brother, he is HEATED. Arthur sets about on a mad killing spree, gouging out the eyes of his victims with a spoon. He collects the eyes for his artwork, you see. This continues for some time with mixed results.

This film was directed by Kent Bateman, father of Jason and Justine, in the streets of a now long gone version of NYC. According to this film, it was a time when a hooker would approach a man covered in blood in the middle of the day in order to turn a trick. The good old days. In addition to this movie being totally batshit insane with a FIERCE mutant soundtrack, it’s a veritable snapshot of a city as nasty as they come. The performances are hammy and intense, like Easter dinner in a mental institution.

Not to be missed!

Horror Boobs presents: MARLEY’S REVENGE: THE MONSTER MOVIE
Dir. Jet Eller, 1989.
83 min, USA.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 – MIDNIGHT

From The Fourth Annual Spectacle Shriek Show. (2014)

“I don’t know about you, man, but I’m still huuuuungry.”

Two bozos get picked up by a gang of vigilantes out to scrub the streets of scum after mistaking the men for drug smugglers. The problem is they’re actually smuggling in their aunt and uncle. The four are whisked away to the local island where they murder all the other drug smugglers. You know what though? None of this even matters because once they get to the island things get really out of hand. Zombies rise from the grave, a giant hell monster shows up, and the vigilantes aren’t too pleased either. How will anyone escape this island alive?

Another marathon mainstay and VHS monolith, Horror Boobs has been providing not only marathon fare but midnight fodder at Spectacle for over a decade!^{[citation needed]} This years entry is…well, something special indeed.

Featuring a completely new transfer and other goodies. If you saw this at the marathon last year, you still haven’t truly seen it. A house favorite and rare treat!

THE 88 GAME – CONVERSATIONS WITH CON

Posted on August 31, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE 88 GAME – CONVERSATIONS WITH CON
Dir. Gen Ken Montgomery, 1993/2012
USA, 60 min.

With:

PREMIER CON/TACT
Dir. Julien Perrin, 2009
France, 12 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM

After the interest and enthusiasm around CON-MYTHOLOGY and CON-MEDITATIONS in August, we thought we’d extend the Conrad Schnitzler vibe with THE 88 GAME – CONVERSATIONS WITH CON, a rarely-screened documentary by CON-MYTHOLOGY organizer (and CON friend and collaborator) Gen Ken Montgomery. Based solely off of an interview conducted by Montgomery at Schnitzler’s Berlin studio in 1993, the hour-long work focuses on hearing from Schnitzler himself. At first speaking about THE 88 GAME, a “computer-assisted piano CONcert performed remotely,” the CONversation expands to Schnitzler’s own reflections on his massive career and the thoughts and philosophies behind his work. CON fanatics (and anyone interested in experimental music and sound art) will be thrilled to dig in deep here – an informal but intensive look into the mind of one of the greats. The work is paired with PREMIER CON/TACT, another documentary short on Schnitzler.

THIS LONG CENTURY Presents AT SPECTACLE

Posted on August 30, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

As curator and co-founder Jason Evans has maintained This Long Century–an online archive of personal insights from artists, authors, filmmakers, musicians and cultural icons the world over–since 2008. With each update This Long Century invites a handful of contributors to share a reflection on something of personal meaning to them. How this translates is up to each contributor, in the past these contributions have included such diverse content as diaries, scrapbooks, family photos, home movies, odes to friends, source material and work in progress. As an unmediated project, This Long Century serves as a direct line to the contributors themselves; shining a light on their everyday lives and uncovering new, unexpected, ways in which to interpret their work.

In celebration of their upcoming 300th post This Long Century has partnered with Spectacle to share in this similar sense of discovery and invite four past contributors to present a selection of their favorites films, giving each carte blanche. Kicking off the series will be TLC’s backbone himself – Jason Evans (9/10), along with Jennifer West (9/16), Lodge Kerrigan (9/24), and Aïda Ruilova (10/2) all in attendance.

This Long Century presents: FATE + 2x SHORTS

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – 7:30 PM
** This Long Century curator / co-founder Jason Evans in person! **

This showcase of films from past This Long Century contributors begins with two rarely screened shorts; HOUSE & GARAGE (25 mins) by Nick Relph and Oliver Payne and TREMOLO AMERICANA (3 mins) by Collier Schorr. Followed by one off VHS screening of the feature film FATE (80 mins) by director and cinematographer Fred Kelemen, described by critic Susan Sontag as “a visionary, one-of-a-kind achievement”.

FATE
(aka: Verhängnis)
Dir. Fred Kelemen, 1994
80 minutes, Germany
In German

The paths of people from various countries cross during the course of one night. They speak different languages, but they are fatefully bound together by the solitary quest for happiness and deliverance. Sloping paths are all that’s left for them in an age of lost perspectives, lost refuges and lost homelands. They sink deeper with every movement that should be liberating them. Every gesture of love becomes a gesture of humiliation. The desperate dance of their life has become a passionate dance of death.

** Fate was shot on Hi-8, and transferred to 16mm via TV screen.

“In minute long takes that preserve the real time of the events, an artificial existence is acted out before the ruthless eye of the camera which has the courage to observe. An existence which, by its directness and veracity, seems to transform into real life.” –Krasimir Krumov

Fred Kelemen is known as a director and cinematographer. His film FATE (1994) received the German National Film Award in 1995 and other awards world wide. Since then, he has made a number of films as director like FROST (1997/1998), NIGHTFALL (1999) and FALLEN (2005). He also collaborated as cinematographer with several film directors, such as Béla Tarr on JOURNEY TO THE PLAIN (1995), THE MAN FROM LONDON (2007), and THE TURIN HORSE (2011), and Joseph Pitchhadze on SWEETS (2013).

HOUSE & GARAGE
Dir. Nick Relph and Oliver Payne, 2001
32 minutes, UK

The title of Relph and Payne’s short film, the second in their trilogy focused on contemporary British culture, makes reference to suburbia — where domestic life typically includes a house and a garage — as well as to the dance music genres of the same name, that flourished there. A collage of images and music, interspersed with spoken passages. Shot with a mixture of video, 16mm and Super 8, in a way that recalls a home movie or a video scrapbook. Imported cultures rub shoulders with middle England, cutting from the den-like bedrooms of ordinary British teenagers, to a man in a cowboy hat as he performs a country and western line-dancing routine.

TREMOLO AMERICANA
Dir. Collier Schorr, 1998
3 minutes, USA

A neckline, a uniform lapel, short buzz cut hair — a brief moment between a young soldier and girlfriend in small town Germany is captured in extreme details. As both lovers turn in a swirling embrace, a soundtrack of iconic American rock music plays.

This Long Century presents: An Evening with Jennifer West

HANDTINTING
Dir. Joyce Wieland, 1967-68
6 minutes, Canada

Produced during Wieland’s 10-year New York period, HANDTINTING was made from the outtakes of a Job Corps documentary. The artist used the same dyes from her textile works as a means of coloring the film. Streaking colors disorient the viewer, as does Wieland’s editing—small movements, actions, and uncompleted gestures all emphasize qualities of disjunction and repetition.

BLACK PLUS X
Dir. Aldo Tambellini, 1966
9 minutes, USA

A group of black children play at Coney Island, in and out of the water, enjoying the rides at the amusement park. The 16mm image goes from positive to negative, from black to white.

BUTTERFLY
Dir. Shirley and Wendy Clarke, 1967
4 minutes, USA

Shirley Clarke filmed this short 3-minute film with her daughter Wendy in 1967 (the same year as JASON). It was screened once at the Elgin, as part of an anti-war program of various directors, and has since been discovered and restored by Milestone.

SECRET SCREENING
Dir. ???
43 minutes

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM

Jennifer West was born in Topanga Canyon, California. Recent exhibitions include Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2010); PAINTBALLS AND PICKLE JUICE, Kunstverein Nuremberg, Germany (2010); POMEGRANATE JUICE & PEPPER SPRAY, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles (2009); LEMON JUICE AND LITHIUM, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2008); ELECTRIC KOOL-AID AND THE MEZKAL WORM, Vilma Gold, London (2008); OCCAMY, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles (2007); The White Room, White Columns, New York (2007). Group shows include IN FULL BLOOM, Galleria Cortese, Milan, Italy (2010); KURT, Seattle Art Museum, Curated by Michael Darling (2010); CELLULOID. CAMERALESS FILM, Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt, Germany, curated by Esther Schlicht (2010); SKATE THE SKY, part of LONG WEEKEND, Tate Modern, London curated by Stuart Comer (2009); NOW YOU SEE IT, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, curated by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson (2008); DRAWING ON FILM, Drawing Center, NY (2008) curated by Joao Ribas; HERE’S WHY PATTERNS Misako and Rosen (2008); IF EVERYBODY HAD AN OCEAN: BRIAN WILSON, AN ART EXHIBITION (touring) Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, England; ; CAPC Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France (2007-08) curated by Alex Farquharson; COME FORTH! EAT, DRINK, AND LOOK…, Gavin Brown at Passerby, New York (2008); WORDS FAIL ME, MOCAD, Contemporary Art Museum, Detroit, Michigan, curated by Matthew Higgs (2007).

This Long Century presents: An Evening with Lodge Kerrigan

FILMS OF CHANTAL AKERMAN
FULL PROGRAM DETAILS FORTHCOMING

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 10:00 PM
** Filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan in person! **

Chantal Akerman is a touchstone filmmaker for many. Although best known for her groundbreaking first feature, JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES, Akerman is responsible for a vast and hugely varied body of work. For this event filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan will focus on some lesser known Akerman films, including the intimate and emotive documentary ONE DAY PINA ASKED.

“Akerman’s film is a work of modestly daring wonder, of exploration and inspiration. With her audacious compositions, decisive cuts, and tightrope-tremulous sense of time-and her stark simplicity-it shares, in a way that Wenders’s film doesn’t, the immediate exhilaration of the moment of creation. Akerman’s film is of a piece with Bausch’s dances.” — Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Lodge Kerrigan lives in New York City. His films include CLEAN, SHAVEN, CLAIRE DOLAN, KEANE, and REBECCA H. (RETURN TO THE DOGS).

This Long Century presents: An Evening with Aïda Ruilova

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 – 7:30 PM

** Filmmaker Aïda Ruilova in person! **

LIFE LIKE
Dir. Aïda Ruilova, 2006
USA, 5 min.

French erotic-horror director Jean Rollin has appeared in two of Aïda Ruilova’s films, both set in Rollin’s Paris home. For LIFE LIKE (2006), the second of the two films, Ruilova shuttles between the interior of Rollin’s apartment and the exterior locations of his films. Revisiting these sites, blending new footage with Rollin’s old scenes, the film traverses the private and filmic spaces of Rollin’s macabre world.

THE IRON ROSE
Dir. Jean Rollin, 1973
France, 86 min.
In French with English subtitles.

THE IRON ROSE is one of Jean Rollin’s most personal works. A departure from the vampire genre for which Rollin is known, the film can be seen as a simple tale: a couple enter a graveyard, once night falls they are unable to make their way out. What’s underneath though is a surreal and melodramatic ghost story unlike any of his other works. The film is accompanied by a striking, stripped down piano score by Pierre Raph (who would also score Rollin’s JEUNES FILLES IMPUDIQUES).

Aïda Ruilova was born in 1974 in Wheeling, West Virginia and lives and works in New York. Ruilova was a nominee for the 2006 Hugo Boss Prize. Her work has been featured in the 50th Venice Biennale, the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and the 4th Berlin Biennial, as well as Tate Britain, London, ZKM, Karlsruhe, The Kitchen, NY, and the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Her recent film HEAD AND HANDS: MY BLACK ANGEL was screened at the Rotterdam film festival in 2013. Upcoming exhibitions include EXCESS BEAUTY at Salzburger Kunstverein and PUNK at the CA2M Contemporary Madrid Art Center 2015.

MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP AT SPECTACLE

Posted on August 30, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

Spectacle is pleased to host Millennium Film Workshop for an ongoing, weekly presentation through December 2015 to showcase a selection of works by cinema artists.

For 49 years, Millennium Film Workshop has supported the emergence of a veritable “who’s who” of experimental and non-commercial film cinema artists, through low cost workshops and equipment access, critical discourse in Open Screenings and the pages of the Millennium Film Journal, and through Personal Cinema Screenings that provide a forum for filmmakers to present and discuss their work in self-curated programs. Continuing a policy of “open” programming, we invite cinema artists and scholars to propose screenings, series, or events. We invite you to contact us at screenings@millenniumfilm.org.

NOW PLAYING:
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4: 7:30 PM – DIVIDING ROADMAPS BY TIMEZONES: FILMS BY AMANDA DAWN CHRISTIE
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13: 7:30 PM – MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP MEMBER’S SHOW

POLYNESIAN TRIANGLE PROGRAM
Dir. Various, 1958-2015
Various, Total Running Time: 75 min.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
** Grahame Weinbren in attendance! **

The program is curated by Grahame Weinbren from an assemblage of films selected by Martin Rumsby. It consists of works primarily by Samoan, New Zealand and Cook Island Maori, moving image artists from the Polynesian Triangle, which extends from New Zealand to Hawaii, from Easter Island to Samoa. All the works are U.S. premieres, and many world premieres made especially for the program. Artists include Leilani Kake, Tanya Ruka, Jeremy Leatinu’u, and Len Lye. The program is based on Martin Rumsby’s “The Ocean is our Prairie,” published in MFJ 61. Graham Weinbren will read from this text.

FREE RADICALS
Dir. Len Lye, 1958-1979
New Zealand, 4 min.

POUTAMA
Dir. Tanya Ruka, 2015
New Zealand, 4 min.

IN PURSUIT OF VENUS (INFECTED), 2 excerpts
Dir. Lisa Reihana, 2015
New Zealand, 3 min.

KIA ORA / KIA ORANA
Dir. Leilani Kake, 2010
Cook Island/New Zealand, 8 min.

THE WELCOME PROJECT
Dir. Jeremy Leatinu’u, 2010
New Zealand, 21 min.

TANE LIVES
Dir. Johnson Witehira, 2011
New Zealand, 3 min

TIMES SQUARE PROJECT [DOCUMENTATION]
Dir. Johnson Witehira, 2012
New Zealand, 2 min.

VAGUE TERRAIN
Dir. Various, 2010-2015
USA/Belgium, Total Running Time: 56 min.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 7:30 PM
** All artists in attendance! **

Curated by Angela Ferraiolo.

A diverse group of filmmakers comes together to examine the familiar and ambiguous–to revisit places, persons, situations or ideas in an effort to find that small part of an experience that escapes logic, system, and the quantifiable. By looking at what is weird, and unstable, these films seek to generate illusory narratives, unsettling landscapes, and strange interiors.

LOS ANGELES II
Dir. Angela Ferraiolo, 2013
USA, 2 min.

GLASS ELEVATOR
Dir. Angela Ferraiolo, 2015
USA, 12 min. 30 sec.

PARADISE
Dir. Noe Kidder, 2010
USA, 10 min.

PARADISE OF CHILDREN
Dir. Noe Kidder, 2015
USA, 3 min.

ALEXIA
Dir. Kevin Jarvis, 2015
USA, 8 min.

INTELLECTUAL DESIGN
Dir. Kevin Jarvis, 2015
USA, 15 min.

DUBAI/ABU DHABI DESERT
Dir. Robbert&Frank Frank&Robbert, 2015
Belgium, 1 min. 30 sec.

QATAR COWBOY SCENE
Dir. Robbert&Frank Frank&Robbert, 2015
Belgium, 3 min. 30 sec.

KIM RICHARDS GOT ARRESTED AT TARGET
Dir. Joey Huertas aka Jane Public, 2003-2013
USA, Total Running Time: 86 min.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 7:30 PM
** Joey Huertas aka Jane Public in attendance! **

Millennium Film Workshop and Spectacle present an evening of film screenings by experimental filmmaker Joey Huertas–aka Jane Public. The screening will included I Need You; Missing Green; I’m not Jesus; Nice People; and I really think it’s a Black and White incident.

Active since the early 1990’s, Huertas has divided his time between social work and his practice as a filmmaker. The complex cinematic research that Huertas deploys extracts–at first sight–of a general violent layer exposing the state of a type of social schizophrenia. Using re-enactments, obscurity and sound sources within many of his films, the stories depicted are personal misers of broader social actions constantly shifting between private and public concerns.

The background upon which Huertas’ works take place can be described as ‘clinical fiction.’

I NEED YOU
Dir. Joey Huertas aka Jane Public, 2004
USA, 37 min.

MISSING GREEN
Dir. Joey Huertas aka Jane Public, 2007
USA, 9 min.

I’M NOT JESUS
Dir. Joey Huertas aka Jane Public, 2013
USA, 3 min.

NICE PEOPLE
Dir. Joey Huertas aka Jane Public, 2008
USA, 26 min.

I REALLY THINK IT’S A BLACK WHITE INCIDENT
Dir. Joey Huertas aka Jane Public, 2003
USA, 11 min.

TRIP AND GO NAKED
Dir. Chris Fiore, 2004
USA, 74 min.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 7:30 PM
** Chris Fiore in attendance! **

TRIP AND GO NAKED is a defiantly, deliriously, and joyously, obscene film. TRIP falls squarely into a time honored tradition of underground cinema, breaking sexual barriers and flaunting taboos, the film is a cavalcade of performances intended to titillate, shock, and terrify.

TRIP AND GO NAKED documents a transgressive variety show that took place in the dead of night over the course of the sweltering New York summer of 1995. Shot in the East Village’s famous Pyramid Club, the film chronicles the efforts of the indomitable Mistress Otter and her band of merry perverts, constantly upping a twisted ante in an escalating series of emotionally intense and dangerous performances. Though it’s definitely not a film for the squeamish, one of the big surprises here is that it’s also quite funny.

In 2004 TRIP AND GO NAKED won the Excellence In Sexual Theater award at the Arlene’s Grocery Picture Show and was featured at The Coney Island film festival.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its shooting, this Millennium Film Workshop screening will be the third time this rarely screened film will be witnessed by the public.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 MINUTES (WHY GO ANYWHERE)
Dir. Jacob Burckhardt, 2000-2015
USA, ~70 min.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14 – 7:30 PM
** Artist in attendance! **

A series of short poetic documentaries shot by Jacob Burckhardt in various places around the world between 2000 and this year. Some in black and white film, some in color video, some in-between. Impressions of a curious pedestrian. Sky light, dancing, night. Italy, New York, Sri Lanka, Estonia, Japan, New Jersey and more.

Over the years Jacob Burckhardt has worked a variety of jobs: blueberry picker, steel mill laborer, Fuller Brush man, truck driver, taxi driver, camera repairman and photographer. He has done sound recording, edited and mixed the sound of many independent movies and teaches at the Cooper Union and the Pratt Institute.

His films include two features: IT DON’T PAY TO BE AN HONEST CITIZEN (1984) with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Vincent D’Onofrio, and LANDLORD BLUES (1986); four featurettes in the series “Black Moments In Great History” (a collaboration with Royston Scott and Gerard Little AKA Mr. Fashion); A GUIDED TOUR OF EDITH’S APARTMENT, a “talking head” documentary about the 90-year-old artist. His movies fall into two categories: comedies and poetic documentaries concerned with texture, atmosphere and presence.

STRING THEORY: RECENT WORKS BY ROBERTA FRIEDMAN & GRAHAME WEINBREN
Dir. Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren, 1976-2015
USA, ~70 min.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21 – 7:30 PM
** Artists in attendance! **

A program of recent films including STRAIGHT FROM BERTHA (1976-2015) and LETTERS (1997-present).

“STRAIGHT FROM BERTHA is straight from the heart. From the mind, it is hardly straight. The Gertrude Stein epigraph—“Everything being alike everything is different simply different naturally simply different”—prescribes the profoundly recursive style of the film will take, starting, as the film does, with the minimalist, structuralist, looping film-within-a-film, appropriated from an earlier era, 1976, then folding into that film new material from many earlier and later eras, generations, and themes, including film history, film language, film style, film institutions, family history, biography, and autobiography.” -Ron Green, from “Notes on Straight from Bertha,” 2015.

FILMS BY TIM GERAGHTY
Dir. Tim Geraghty, 2013-2015.
USA, ~70 min.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28 – 7:30 PM
** Artist in attendance! **

3D visions. Plagues of cicadas. Charred forests, crowded subways, the monkey’s hand. Basements. Old cars. Soiled spots, torn extensions. Movies for each of your eyes. Binocular visions and locked doors. Mushrooms, dashboards, a walk to the store. Window planes, bending floors. Psychology. Food. Decapitation. Somehow these movies all make sense.

Program includes:
SOMETHING MIGHT HAPPEN, 2013, 16min (Anaglyph 3D video)
RAVEN AND DOVE, 2014, 11min (Anaglyph 3D video)
HERE COMES EVERYBODY, 2014, 10min (bipacked 16mm film)
NOVEL, 2015, 22min (Anaglyph 3D video, live optical sound performance)

Tim Geraghty is a film & video artist in the avant-garde tradition working largely with stereo 3D. His work has shown at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, the London Institute of Contemporary Art, Microscope Gallery, Flaherty NYC, and the International Film Festival Oberhausen. He is currently completing a documentary he has edited and co-directed. Born and educated in Providence, Rhode Island, he now lives and works in Queens, NY.

DIVIDING ROADMAPS BY TIMEZONES: FILMS BY AMANDA DAWN CHRISTIE
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2000-2010
Canada, Total Running Time: 71 min.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM
**Amanda Dawn Christie in attendance!**

This program of work is a survey of ten years of her practice from 2000-2010. These films reflect Amanda Dawn Christie’s restless growth as an artist. Moving from hand processing to optical printing, contact printing, and performance, she layers memories and images in an effort to explore her past. Train trips, relationships, and her efforts to plumb the depths of the image all contribute to an ever changing evolution of her work.

“Amanda Dawn Christie traces the proximity and distance between places and people, images and memories; experiences, sensations, thoughts. Christie works the surface and the deeper materiality of film to trace the perpetual motion of subjectivity […] Analogous to a series of letters from one to another, Christie etches fragments of a life lived and places traveled into the fabric of the film medium. ”
-Scott Birdwise – Canadian Film Institute-

HERE
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2000
Canada, 3 min
Super 8, BW, silent

One of Christie’s first films, this hand processed super 8 film was created as a part of Helen Hill’s Ladies Film Bee . Twelve women in Halifax were invited to each shoot a roll of super 8 film edited in camera, and then after handprocessing in Helen’s bathtub, they spent an afternoon of tea, chit-chat, cucumber sandwiches and film animation at the kitchen table.

FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2003
Canada, 1 min
16mm, colour, hand scratched sound

Live actions with hand scratched sound, this film presents the frustration of feeling the need to speak with nothing to say. Filmed by the artist’s husband at the time, the film also relates to subtle complexities of communication within marriage.

TURNING
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2004
Canada, 9 min
16mm, BW, silent

Throughout the journey, meanings that symbols once held for us shift and change as black and white blend to form grey. We see ourselves reflected in the world around us and the world around us envelops us. Things that were once threatening become comforting arms of solace while things that were once sanctuaries threaten to drown us. Water has the power to cleanse as well as the power to drown while the forest is both protective and foreboding.

This film was originally projected onto a wall of melting ice as a part of the Quiet Triptych performance

PLAYING JACOB
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2005
Canada, 3 min
16mm, colour, optical sound

Loosely exploring the historical weight of institutionalized religion , and its relationship to individual spirituality, the filmmaker places herself into the Jacob myth of the Pentateuch. She plays the role of Jacob in an attempt to come to terms with her religious upbringing, and her anxious ambivalence towards her own agnosticism. Inspired by the in-camera techniques of the early cinema of Meliese, the film and all of its special effects were shot and edited in-camera.

16MM POSTCARD
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2005
Canada, 3 min
16mm, BW, optical sound

A diaristic film in which the filmmaker comes to terms with her new life in Vancouver, “16mm Postcard” is a bittersweet letter back home to the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative in Halifax. Like in any letter, it becomes painfully obvious that one can never fully communicate an experience or a longing, and the result is a series of random tidbits that point to a larger experience.

KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2005
Canada, 1 min 25 sec
16mm, colour, silent

This film is an abstract exploration of the tension surrounding women and stereotypical representations of their knowledge. This film was created from footage shot at Phil Hoffman’s independent imaging retreat (aka “the film farm”) in Ontario as well as from footage shot in Vancouver. All of the footage was hand-processed, and some of it was contact printed by hand and treated in baths of potassium ferricyanide. The final film was created through various optical printing techniques.

THIS UNNAMABLE LITTLE DREAM: OR A TRACED SKETCH OF TWO BROTHERS
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2005
Canada, 3 min
Super 8, BW, silent

A personal narrative about the end of a marriage inserted into an homage to the Brother’s Quay. This film was commissioned for the Splice This Remake This program.

MECHANICAL MEMORY
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2006
Canada, 5min
16mm, BW, optical sound

Created from super 8 footage that was shot in the 1970s of the family dogs and the trains that my father worked on, this film explores the decay of memory and image. The super 8 film grew fungus while stored in a basement. It was then optically printed up to 16mm and slowed down so that the snowflake shaped fungus could be studied. Narration presents fragmented stories of childhood memories. This film was created as a source film, which was later physically cut up and reprinted with a flashlight to destroy the image and sound for the subsequent film “Mechanical/Animal Memory” which is owned by the NFB.

3PART HARMONY: COMPOSITION IN RGB #1
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2006
Canada, 6 min
16mm, colour, optical sound

This experimental dance film employs a bastardized version of the 1930s three strip Technicolor process. Shot entirely on black and white film through color filters, the images were recombined into full color through optical printing techniques, one frame at a time. The gestures in this dance work explore the psychological fracturing and reunification in representations of the female body.

A MATERNAL RECORD NOT FULLY RECORDED
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2006
Canada, 3 min
Super 8, colour, live sound

A look at our attempts to preserve the past in home movies and photographs, and the disparity between the actual lived events and the mnemonic objects. Super 8 home movies from the 1970s show my mother and myself as a toddler, blowing bubbles and riding horse back. The original super 8 footage was transferred to video, then filmed back onto super 8 from a television monitor in an attempt to translate the memories from medium to medium degenerating and deteriorating with each transfer.

FALLEN FLAGS
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2007
Canada, 8min
16mm, colour, optical sound

A layered tapestry of trains and underwater footage exploring the realms of fear death and transience, this film places the traces of human voices amidst the flickering light and shadows of empty passenger cars. This film Stems from a train trip from one end of Canada to the other and back again, and the loss of a friend in a drowning accident. This project involved 15 days of train travel from Vancouver to Halifax and back again (1200 km in total).

POINT A – > POINT B
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2009
Canada, 3 min
Super 8, BW, double system sound

Created for a program of Acadian films curated by Mario Doucette for 8fest. This film is a meditation on identity, geography, and language; Je viens d’Acadie, mais je ne suis peut-être même pas Acadienne; est-ce que c’est la langue? la géographie? l’histoire?

V=D/T
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2008
Canada, 7min 36 sec
16mm, colour, optical sound

This film explores the possibility of measuring distances between loved ones through time zones. The sound track is comprised of personal and tragic phone messages left on voicemail when individuals could not connect due to great time zone differences, while the visual elements present simple and contemplative images of antique telephones, on handprocessed colour film, using a modified steenbeck as a contact printer.

TRANSMISSIONS
Dir: Amanda Dawn Christie, 2010
Canada, 15 min
Expanded cinema performance for two 16mm projectors, optics, and radio

An improvisational performance for analogue and digital technologies that explores radio waves and dreaming; satellites and ideas; wireless internet and cell phones; television and radio broadcasts; all of these signals contribute to complex interconnected webs of invisible landscapes and invisible architectures passing through our bodies in every time and in every space.

___

Amanda Dawn Christie is a Canadian artist working in film, video, performance, photography, and electroacoustic sound. Since 1997 she has been involved with artist run centres, serving on boards, working as a technician and later as a director, teaching workshops, publishing, and serving on juries across Canada. She completed her MFA at the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, before moving to Amsterdam. Upon her return to Canada she worked as director of the Galerie Sans Nom and the RE:FLUX music festival. She left the gallery last year to work as a full time artist.

MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP MEMBER’S SHOW
Curated by Lili White
Dir: Various, Various
Total Running Time: 73 minutes

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 7:30PM
**Curator and artists in attendance!**

This is a Members show of filmmakers involved with MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP. There is no theme, no style, no philosophy or anything that connects these works together. Each presents an individual filmmaker work through their own personal cinema. – Lili White, curator

ZULEIKA DOBSON (digital)
Dir: Catherine Corman
2 min, 41 sec

MARIETTA (16mm)
Dir: Adele Friedman
5 min
“Marietta” was filmed in Vienna, Austria, in an apartment building that has been in her family since the aught years of the 20th century. The film is in black and white, which suits the interior of mementoes and heirlooms, family portraits and souvenirs of eras past. Yet Marietta is extremely energetic and contemporary in her approach to life.

BABEL (digital)
Dir: Margot Niederland (Theremin Music: Llamano)
4 min, 40 sec
A meditation on the consistency of change. I shot this footage on 16mm film and double exposed it in-camera. During my residency at The Experimental TV Center, I used one of their old analogue machines and turned its dials and knobs to create the effects.

EAST RIVER PAVILION, UPPER EAST SIDE, NYC (16mm to digital)
Dir: Barton Lewis
3 min, 4 sec
A study of a rusting steel truss bejeweled with flaking paint at the East River Pavilion.

WISCONSIN CHEESE QUILT 1 (digital)
Dir: Peter Kingsbury
3 min
This is quilted from still and moving digital captures I made at a Wisconsin cheese and root beer oasis. Over several months I had become fascinated with my wife’s art practice transition from painting to quilting. Pondering images from our recent transcontinental road trip, I suddenly thought of quilting them -though I could not imagine the process or result. I still can’t -which is a refreshing change in my art practice. I have plans for more quilts. I find that sewing timelines raises interesting questions about drama and decoration.

STARFISH AORTA COLOSSUS (8mm to digital)
Dir: Lynne Sachs and Sean Hanley
4 min, 30 sec
NYC poet Paolo Javier invited Sachs to create a film that would speak to one of his poems from his book COURT OF THE DRAGON (Nightboat Books). Sachs chose Stanza 10 from Javier’s poem “Starfish Aorta Colossus”. She then collaborated with film artist Sean Hanley to edit the film. Together, they traveled through 25 years of unsplit Regular 8 mm film that Sachs had shot
including footage of the A.I.D.S. Quilt from the late 1980s, a drive from Florida to San Francisco, and a journey into a very untouristic part of Puerto Rico. Throughout the process, they explore the syntactical ruptures, the celebration of nouns and the haunting resonances of Javier’s poetry.

THE DOGS OF SPACE (digital)
Designed by Michael Betancourt
3 min
This narrative fuses documentary, scientific, fictional and abstract glitch footage into a composite story, dramatizing the launch of two Soviet space dogs, Belka and Strelka, into orbit. It explores glitch and realism, where the two are held in tension against each other: a balance between the abstracting and representing functions of digital imaging. In this
trajectory between realism and the geometric, the formal dimensions of digitally encoded motion transform live action footage into something else by shifting between the surface flatness of pixels and their organization into particular, recognizable subject matter. This engagement is distinctly semiotic: recognizable imagery as signifier (earlier, quoted work) in an arrangement and context that changes the meaning of concepts such as “Heavens and Earth” to provide a visionary subtext to scientific exploration. The immanent identification provided by archival material is essential. By using twentieth century scientific and public domain footage, these explicit quotations enable a synthesis, drawing attention to my reuse. Glitching functions syntactically in this fusion; linking shot-quotations while at the same time providing inflection that changes the imagery’s meaning separately from issues of montage or sequence. The continuous flow of imagery is precisely the point to this process: there is only a limited distinction between one “shot” and the next, eschewing montage for the continuity of the long take data stream of the digital file. The results are neither edited nor animated, but a hybrid recognizable as the “morph” where one image becomes the next seamlessly by degrees of change over time. These technically-generated transformations give rise to both the abstracting and representing dimensions of the imagery equally.

THE GAME IMPROVES AS A SPECTACLE (Super 8 /animation to digital)
Dir: Guy Kozak
2 min, 26 sec
A contest between Yellow and Blue and another phase in Guy Kozak’s ongoing exploration of the aesthetics and psychology of American Football. Shot on the field in Super 8.

SNEAKING UP ON PEOPLE (digital)
Dir: Jonathan Mittiga
3 min
Visit www.plermpt.com for more info!

IN THE FOOTSTEPS (16mm to digital)
Dir: Jacob Burckhardt, 2009
13 min, 4 sec
A trip through Jordan, following the footsteps of Jean Louis Burckhardt, the explorer who was the first European to see Petra in hundreds of years. Shot in 16mm B&W.

GUILTY
Dir: George Spencer, 2014
3 min, 33 sec
From a performance in Berlin

[T] (digital)
Dir: Philippe Leonard (Sound by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma)
12 min
[T] is a film at the limit of cinema, an experiment in the moving image where stillness and movement converge on each other to produce an experience of time as space. Philippe Leonard shot the footage for this remarkable work at Times Square, in New York City, during the hours of artificial illumination. Partly for this reason, it is an oneiric diary, tempted by myth and, at the same time, suffused by a melancholy sense that myth has lost its magical power. Faces appear and disappear in spasmodic waves of light, which emanate from billboards and mobile telephone screens and confuse the boundary between the organic and the artificial. The dilation of time and the miniaturization that that enables in [T] also ensures that the momentary betrayal of excitement, suspicion, attraction, hesitation, boredom and relief that traverses these faces approaches pure physicality. A smile, a blank stare, a fluttering eyelash: what the film permits us to encounter in these isolated elements is a materiality drained of eroticism, a society of bodies beneath the neon signs, where the market has abducted everything and everyone. The meticulously edited image track is brilliantly echoed in a sound track that renders the underground subway as a haunting residue and subtext. Times Square is a stop on the subway line; [T] is a film that arrests the mania of that space, giving to the viewer a rare experience of visual redemption.” – Rosalind Morris

ALVARO (digital)
Dir: Jean Sousa (Music: A.Vitorino d’Almeida, Lyrics: Jose Saramago, Sung by: Misia)
6 min, 13 sec 6.13
A meditation on loss, based on a poem written by Alice Goncalves Sousa about the death of her brother Alvaro. Using Nature used as metaphor for the fragility of life and including archival photographs and material objects left behind by one who passed, it embodies the spirit of Fado, Portugal’s urban folk music.

SUHAIL AND THE ONE HAVING CROSSED OVER
Dir: Anna Kipervaser (Sound: Freesound/Yle Archives & Anna Kipervaser)
5 min, 55 sec
Before he was known as Canopus, he was called Suhail. And before that his name was Osiris. In all documented cases, he had two sisters, one of whom was left behind. She always signals the coming of an other, bigger than she. Their legend lives on to this day; each night the two sisters mourn him – and their separation – across the great heavenly river.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (digital)
Dir: Catherine Corman
4 min

FELONY COMICS CRIME SPREE #3

Posted on August 30, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

Negative Pleasure is pleased to announce the latest installment of our ongoing series, the Felony Comics Crime Spree, in celebration of the debut of Felony Comics #3, an anthology of underground crime comics featuring new work by Brigid Deacon, Ben Passmore, Pete Toms, Thomas Slattery, Amy Searles and Harris Smith, with a cover by Kid Space Heater creator Josh Burggraf and a never before seen pin-up of Michel Fiffe’s Copra!

For such a monumentously criminal undertaking, we have dug deep into the annals of cinematic crime and unearthed two little seen tales of delinquent malefaction. All shows $5, make an evening of it.

DAY OF THE WOLVES
Dir. Ferde Grofé Jr, 1971
USA, 95 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM

In this post-Western, neo-noir heist film, a cadre of bearded thieves, each identified only by number, with no name, conspire to rob an entire town. Clad in black jumpsuits and wielding submachine guns, they have little trouble taking the whole village’s populace hostage, but Sheriff Pete Anderson isn’t going to take that kind of antisocial behavior lying down. Outmanned, outgunned, and with the lives of his family, friends and constituency at risk, Anderson fights back! Starring noir veteran Richard Egan (SLAUGHTER ON 10TH AVENUE) and venerable Borchst Belt comedian Jan Murray (aka Uncle Raymond on “My Two Dads”).

DRUG RUNNERS
Dir. Alan Kuskowski, 1988
USA/Mexico, 86 min.
in English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10:00 PM

Featuring one of the last performances by once-great character actor Aldo Ray, DRUG RUNNERS hits all the marks a low-budget 80’s action thriller oughta. The bad guys are bad, the good guys play by their own rules. There are sports cars, blazing Uzis, big hair, desperate chases across the Mexican border and a flustered chief who’s getting way too old for this shit. The specifics, if they matter, involve a hotshot Mexican cop and his beautiful partner infiltrating a ruthless smuggling carter in a mission that’s more out for vengeance than justice. Gunfights ensue. Directed by Alan Kuskowski (FIRST STRIKE).

REVOLT
Dir. J. Shaybany, 1986
USA/Persia, 72 min.
In heavily dubbed English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – MIDNIGHT

Written by the enigmatically named Shield, this US-Persian co-production features yet another cop-on-the-edge squaring off against yet another band of ruthless drug dealers, this time set against the racial tensions set off by the Iran hostage crisis. Shot without sound and weirdly overdubbed, Revolt is a schizophrenic mess of a movie (i.e. perfect for a Spectacle midnight) that can’t decide whether it’s a hard-hitting, socially conscious crime drama or a goofy, lighthearted action comedy. Fortunately, the filmmakers lacked the ability to appropriately orchestrate either, and the result is a near-hallucinatory mess of inscrutable plot developments and character flourishes. Whatever the intent, Revolt is one of the most consistently entertaining hidden gems of 1980s action cinema!

SEPTEMBER MIDNIGHTS

Posted on August 29, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4: MONDO BIZARRO
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5: MONDO FREUDO

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11: REVOLT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12: THE FORBIDDEN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18: RUBY
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19: THE DEAD DON’T DIE

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25: NINJA WARS

RUBY
Dir. Curtis Harrington, 1977
USA, 84 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – MIDNIGHT
** One night only! **
** Don’t miss this month’s Harrington shorts! **

To call Ruby an EXORCIST/CARRIE knockoff (Piper Laurie starred in both, this film a year after CARRIE, also it’s about possession, which everyone on IMDB knows never appeared in a film before Friedkin) misses the point entirely: rather than being the story of an ostracized teenage girl and her overbearing mother, it’s the story of Ruby, a one-time gangster’s moll turned single mother, drunk and drive-in owner who begins receiving messages from her rubbed-out hood boyfriend through their mute child Leslie. Bodies begin piling up, with employees at the drive-in meeting a series of grisly ends, and Ruby’s ever-tenuous grip on reality slides into madness. Harrington’s love of southern Gothic and period pieces is in full display here, as always more interested in creeping dread than shock. Best known via a TV edit often played on midnight creature features (re-edited and with additional material shot without Harrington’s approval, possibly by Stephanie Rothman, leading to Harrington removing his name from the TV edited version), the copy we’ll be playing is the uncut theatrical version, closest to Harrington’s original vision. Beloved by Leni Riefenstahl, it’s a film only Harrington could have directed.

THE DEAD DON’T DIE
Dir. Curtis Harrington, 1975
USA, 74 min.
In English

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – MIDNIGHT
** One night only! **
** Don’t miss this month’s Harrington shorts! **

Perdito is dead! His body is merely an instrument through which I speak. The dead are my children!

“Not too long after The Killer Bees was completed, Doug Cramer offered me another Robert Bloch story from the pages of Weird Tales to direct. The Dead Don’t Die was about zombies and took place during the depths of the depression. I was once more back in the period territory of What’s The Matter With Helen?, and I loved it.” -Curtis Harrington, Nice Guys Don’t Live In Hollywood

The 70s was a golden age for TV horror, from tv shows (Night Gallery, Circle Of Fear, Kolchak The Night Stalker) to films like DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW, DON’T GO TO SLEEP and BAD RONALD. By 1975, Harrington was well into his TV career, or as he called it, his “slippery slope”. Of his many TV projects, THE DEAD DON’T DIE is among his best, making the most of Harrington’s attention to period piece detail, his taste for the Gothic and his love of casting actors best know from earlier work, with Joan Blondell, Ray Milland and Yvette Vickers (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) joining George Hamilton all doing great, moody work. It’s a film about as far away from the action-film-pretending-to-be-horror status of the contemporary zombie film, the entire film drenched in timeless night, an occult atmosphere permeating everything, perfectly balanced against the pulpy detective quality of a man seeking to clear his brother’s name descending into witchcraft and madness. By turns chilling, paranoid and absolutely lovely, it’s a perfect demonstration of Harrington’s sullen style in a format which, for a short time at least, proved a suitable pairing. Never released on DVD or Blu-Ray!

NINJA WARS
Dir. Kôsei Saitô, 1982
Japan, 95 min.
Japanese dubbed in English

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 – MIDNIGHT
** One night only! **

Good fantasy needs some missing pieces. Just as we mumble increasingly nonsensical arguments in bed to prepare ourselves for dreams each night, films that transfer us to another world sometimes need to be defended for their irrationality. Does THE NINJA WARS have a lot in the realm of character development? It really could not have less. Does it need any to make us care about these characters who decide in an instant they love or hate each other? Also no. Is plot often shoehorned into exposition scenes that offer the barest pretext for random groups of men dressed in exotic period costumes to slaughter each other while our main characters wait patiently in the middle of the affray? Yes. But are those fights awesome? Also yes.
THE NINJA WARS is a beautiful film, camera and special effects departments come together and diverge in an elegant counterpoint of daring composition and extreme gore, criteria of excellence Japanese filmmakers have thankfully never thought of separating. It’s also beautifully blocked, thanks to the mechanistic Kabuki aesthetics that give every little movement, of every completely retarded dramatic scene, the same quality of dance as the fights.

There is something like a real story still shining through from novelist Futaro Yamada’s source material. Yamada also wrote the novel that became Oshima’s PLEASURES OF THE FLESH, a much more coherent drama about a misogynist chasing pieces of an ideal woman across various female bodies. The same exchange in WARS has a reverse meaning. The forces of evil need a woman to legitimate their power, she in turn offers them a series of counterfeit versions of her likeness. In the process she is constantly becoming more abstract, losing her head, then her life, then her any identity independent of her twin, ultimately arriving back in her true love’s arms as nothing more than the principle of self-determination, represented by a symbol of Western values, the crucifix. These were principle concerns of Yamada’s, who was famous not only for pulp novels about ninja wars, but also the bitterness of a postwar generation that viewed Japanese society as a “pile of acorns with zero regard for personal independence or uniqueness.” That uniqueness is denied brutally in FLESH, and only regained in WARS as the faintest promise amid overwhelming, violent nonsense.

For the staggering and delirious in our midnight audience, who look to the ninja war genre for simpler satisfactions, we can promise the following: some (limited, but fruitful) screen time for Sonny Chiba, projectile vomiting monks (who can fly), doppelgänger succubi, an impressive variety decapitation scenes, and a love story that does not require any serious attention to the dialogue to enjoy.

THE STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY

Posted on August 29, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

This September, Spectacle presents three incredibly savage, incredibly savory kung fu films that launched the career of martial arts star Sonny Chiba and became landmarks of Japanese exploitation cinema – THE STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY!

Following the crossover success of Bruce Lee (who died the previous year), the mighty Japanese film company Toei decided to gamble on a considerably darker, more nasty brand of martial arts action with an unknown actor as the star. The result was THE STREET FIGHTER- a hard-boiled, gore-drenched exploitation classic that spawned an entire franchise of sequels and spinoffs.

Praised by fans as some of the best kung fu films of the era and worshipped by Tarantino for decades, don’t miss this chance to experience grindhouse exploitation at its finest!

Presented UNCUT and in their ORIGINAL JAPANESE LANGUAGE!

THE STREET FIGHTER
Dir: Shigehiro Ozawa, 1974
Japan, 87 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 10PM

Sonny Chiba IS Tokuma Tsurugi: a high-priced, high-voltage assassin hired by the Yakuza to kidnap the heiress of a deceased billionaire. When his demands are too high, all-out chaos ensues. Shortly thereafter, the body count starts to grow…

A significant shift away from the classic, technical martial arts, THE STREET FIGHTER features numerous sequence of raw, shockingly graphic brawls and battles that garnered the film the first ever X rating solely for violence. Chiba is pure brute force, an anti-hero that acts not out of honor, but for self-satisfaction. But even for a character with zero morals, Chiba’s magnetic personality shines through, lending his mercenary killer a sparkly, devilish demeanor.

A prime cut of juicy 70s kung-fu topped with an X-ray blast to the skull, THE STREET FIGHTER is unadulterated escapism of the bloodiest order.

RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER
Dir, Shigehiro Ozawa, 1974
Japan, 79 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 – 10PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – 10PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 5PM

Chiba returns in full beast mode for THE SREET FIGHTER TRILGOY’s second entry!

Once again hired by the Yakuza to do their dirty business, Tsurugi must grapple with potentially killing an old friend and an old nemesis hellbent on revenge!

THE STREET FIGHTER’S LAST REVENGE
Dir, Shigehiro Ozawa, 1974
Japan, 80 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – 10PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 10PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 10PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 7:30PM

THE STREET FIGHTER TRILGOY concludes with Sonny Chiba channeling James Bond!

THE STREET FIGHTER’S LAST REVENGE takes a turn towards spy film and finds Tsurugi using a fistful of gadgets and masks to battle a sombrero-donned, laser-wielding Mexican bandito!

Featuring pinku legend Ike Reiko!

TWO FILMS BY ROLF BELGUM

Posted on August 29, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

DRIVER 23
Dir. Rolf Belgum, 1998
USA, 72 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 5PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 10PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 10PM

THE ATLAS MOTH
Dir. Rolf Belgum, 2001
USA, 72 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 10PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 10PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – 7:30PM

A true-life This Is Spinal Tap, Rolf Belgum’s two-film verite opus documents musician/deliveryman Dan Cleveland as he attempts to take his fourth-rate “progressive metal” band Dark Horse out of his cluttered Minneapolis basement and into the limelight. Filmed over seven years and only occasionally venturing outside Cleveland’s house, these two documentaries offer a portrayal of obsessive determination undaunted by terrible decisions, harsh reality and repeated failure. Cleveland has a severe form of obsessive-compulsive disorder which he treats with extreme doses of Zoloft and Prozac, and as we watch him strive for glory, his delusions of grandeur appear alternately psychotic, moronic, misguided and yet ultimately inspiring. He remains valiantly if obliviously steadfast as we witness his marriage crumble, his bandmates quit, his talent questioned, and his ill-conceived schemes – such as a horrifyingly dangerous rope-and-cinderblock pulley system designed to move heavy musical equipment – fail miserably. But despite every possible setback, Cleveland constructs the makeshift “Jury Rig” Recording Studio in his basement and ultimately completes, after nearly a decade, Dark Horse’s debut CD “Guts Before Glory.” Taken together, Belgum’s films, made for under $700, deserve to be placed alongside American Movie as a classic portrait of quixotic ambition gone awry.

YOU CALL THIS PROGRESS!? ALYCE WITTENSTEIN AT SPECTACLE

Posted on August 28, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 8:00 PM ** w/ Alyce Wittenstein, Steve Ostringer, & Garrett Oliver in attendance for intro/Q&A! **
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 10:00 PM

Alyce Wittenstein has been called the “Queen of the New York Underground” and this September, Spectacle is pleased to play host to her and the films making up her MULTIPLE FUTURES trilogy. These films are jam packed with familiar faces, exquisite set pieces, snappy dialogue, and dazzling costumes. While the films have indeed been shown the world over, these screenings will be the first in New York in almost two decades. Join us all month for these remarkable films in a celebration of science fiction, hilarity, character actors, and ghastly view of a not-too-distant world.

PLUS
Special guests, vintage press and screening ephemera from around the world, original props, maybe some custom made buttons, outtakes, and more!

BETAVILLE
Dir. Alyce Wittenstein, 1986
20 min.

The first in what would come to be known as the MULTIPLE FUTURES trilogy, BETAVILLE – a post-modern nightmare – finds a down and out detective Coman Gettme (played by Wittenstein mainstay Steve Ostringer) returning to his hometown after a chance meeting with The Girl (Holly Adams). Once the two arrive in Gettme’s Cadillac things immediately go from bad to worse for this gumshoe when he learns, over a slice at Stromboli’s, that High Fashion is the new law in town. Gettme becomes obsessed with The Girl and is determined to meet back up with her and “save” her from the these fashionable fascists.

BETAVILLE kicks off the trilogy in a pitch perfect send up of the French New Wave and science fiction, and turns noir on it’s ear while (literally) running through some familiar parts of NYC. Holly Adams is nothing short of dynamite and Ostringer’s distinctive production design would lay the groundwork for the look of the films to come. Years before becoming Brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, Garrett Oliver was co-producer on the film. The short would go on to be nominated for a number of awards at festivals and play all over the world – often (unsurprisingly) alongside Godard’s ALPHAVILLE.

“Most of the detective narrator dialogue is clever, the cinematography is excellent, and I liked the (sort of) industrial music and the song by the Singing Squirrels.” – Michael J. Weldon, Psychotronic Magazine #2, 1989.

NO SUCH THING AS GRAVITY
Dir. Alyce Wittenstein, 1989
40 min.

In the not too distant future the LaFont corporation has all but taken over Earth. The company has revolutionized all elements of style, beauty, education, and housing but in the process (progress?!) has shipped many of Earth’s more “useless” inhabitants to the mysterious man made planet – and the largest scale experiment in human history – known as Nova Terra. Two scientists – Kay Zorn (Holly Adams) and Albert Leenhardt (Steve Robinson) are about to receive a prestigious award for their work on the LaFont Facelifter when they learn that Nova Terra is disrupting the Earth’s gravitational pull and will soon collide if it’s not destroyed. A headstrong lawyer and Kay’s boyfriend – Adam Malkonian (a scenery chewing Nick Zedd) – mouths off to a judge (the incomparable Taylor Mead – RIP) while defending a human teacher and is ordered to be relocated to the doomed planet. After meeting with the ambassador of Nova Terra (Emmanuelle Chaulet of Eric Rohmer’s BOYFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS), Malkonian learns that perhaps the LaFont Corporation hasn’t been entirely truthful about what really happens on Nova Terra and vows to stop the destruction.

Wittenstein’s first sync sound film is overflowing with amazing set pieces and incredible performances. Some scenes were shot at the New York Hall of Science – including an Ames room and a number of other dazzling optical illusions. Look out for cameos from Michael J. Anderson (TWIN PEAKS), Wittenstein’s father as the insidious Andreas LaFont, and the director herself on Nova Terra.

THE DEFLOWERING
Dir. Alyce Wittenstein, 1994
40 min.

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old are dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” – Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks.

The quote above opens Wittenstein’s third and final film – THE DEFLOWERING. Again featuring some of Wittenstein’s tried and true players – Holly Adams, Emmanuelle Chaulet, Taylor Mead, and more – the film concerns yet another evil corporation this time HUXLEY BIO-TECH and their means to sanitize/beautify this world of ours. This time Wittenstein (with Ostringer back on production design) takes the costuming helm as well.

The TIB (Total Immune Breakdown) virus has left the planet reeling and lethal allergic reaction are at an all time high. Huxley’s efforts to produce perfect, designer children that are immune to viruses have had the side effect of hyper-allergic reactions. Why isn’t anything being done about allergies? No one wants to fund it! With the mortality rate skyrocketing, can mankind bounce back and feel the soft caress of skin against skin ever again or will the line at the Holo-Memorial Funeral Home grow ever longer?

THE KALAMPAG TRACKING AGENCY: AN EVENING OF FILM FROM THE PHILIPPINES SPANNING THE PAST 30 YEARS

Posted on August 28, 2015December 26, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE KALAMPAG TRACKING AGENCY:
AN EVENING OF FILM FROM THE PHILIPPINES
SPANNING THE PAST 30 YEARS
Dir. Various, 1985–2015
Various, 67 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 8:00 PM ** ONE NIGHT ONLY! **

Spectacle is pleased to host The Kalampag Tracking Agency for an evening of film from the Philippines spanning the past 30 years. Filmmaker Gym Lumbera, artist Miko Revereza, and guest curator Lian Ladia will join us for a Q&A after the program.

The Kalampag Tracking Agency is a curatorial and organizational collaboration between Shireen Seno and Merv Espina. Overcoming institutional and personal lapses to give attention to little-seen works—some quite recent, some surviving loss and decomposition—this program collects loose parts in motion, a series of bangs, or kalampag in Tagalog, assembled by their individual strengths and how they might resonate off each other and a contemporary audience. Featuring some of the most striking films and videos from the Philippines and its diaspora, this initiative continues to navigate the uncharted topographies of Filipino alternative and experimental moving image practice from the past 30 years.

All works in this program are screened with the kind permission of the individual artists, the Mowelfund Film Institute and the Ateneo Art Gallery.

DROGA!
Dir. Miko Revereza, 2014
Philippines/USA, 7 min. 21 sec.

A Super 8 tourist film about the Los Angeles landscape through the lens of Filipino immigrants, examining cultural identity bydocumenting the intersections of American pop culture and Filipino traditions.

Miko Revereza was born in Manila and grew up in the San Francisco bay area. Since relocating to Los Angeles in 2010, he’s worked primarily on music videos and live video art installations for L.A.’s experimental music scene. His personal films explore identity and the Americanization of the Filipino immigrant.

MINSAN ISANG PANAHON
Aka ONCE UPON A TIME
Dir. Melchor Bacani III, 1989
Philippines, 4 min.

An experiment in optical printing using Super 8 home movies and hand-colored found film material. The film was created during the influential Christoph Janetzko workshops, conducted in 1989 and 1990, in collaboration with Mowelfund Film Institute, Goethe Institut and the Philippine Information Agency.

Melchor Bacani III was an active staple of the Mowelfund Film Institute (MFI) film workshops in the late 80s and early 90s, creating several films in the process.

ABCD
Dir. Roxlee, 1985
Philippines, 5 min. 22 sec.

An experimental animation, decidedly crude in approach, part sociopolitical commentary and surrealist whimsy, advocating for a new and personal take on the alphabet.

Roxlee is an icon of underground Philippine cinema. Apart from making animated and collage films, he is also a comic-strip artist known for ‘Cesar Asar’ and ‘Santingwar’. In the late 80s, he was featured in retrospectives in Hamburg and Berlin. In 2010, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Animation Council of the Philippines.

BUGTONG: ANG SIGAW NI LALAKE
Aka RIDDLE: THE SHOUT OF MAN
Dir. RJ Leyran, 1990
Philippines, 3 min. 20 sec.

Rumoured to have used footage salvaged from a commercial studio dumpster, the film is a commentary on Filipino on-screen macho culture and one of the rare surviving works in the brief filmmaking career of Ramon ‘RJ’ Leyran. It was a product of the last Christoph Janetzko film workshop, with a focus on experiments with optical printers, held in 1990.

RJ Leyran was active on and off screen in the late 80s and early 90s independent film communities. He was also an actor in several television soap operas, commercials, and movies, including Radio (2001), Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002) and The Great Raid (2005).

VERY SPECIFIC THINGS AT NIGHT
Dir. John Torres, 2011
Philippines, 4 min. 29 sec

A mobile phone film that captures the peculiar tension between the beauty, violence, and raw exuberance of New Year’s Eve in Manila. Shot on Mahiyain Street (Shy Street), Sikatuna, a stone’s throw away from the house of Chavit Singson, who also led the masses to bring then President Estrada out of the presidential palace.

A poet among Filipino filmmakers who work outside the commercial film industry, John Torres has developed an idiosyncratic cinematic syntax, often using on or off-screen spoken texts, including the poetry of local authors. The imagery and structure of his films are not prosaic, but associative and fragmented.

JUAN GAPANG
Aka JOHNNY CRAWL
Dir. Roxlee, 1986
Philippines, 7 min. 18 sec.

A man searches for his destiny while crawling the streets of the metropolis at the height of the Marcos dictatorship, traversing the main EDSA thoroughfare, and tracing the shadows of the pillars of the Manila Film Center, all just before the People Power Revolution and the storming of EDSA that toppled the Marcos regime.

Roxlee is an animator, visual artist, musician, and filmmaker, working with the barest of materials to conjure powerful images with biting humor. His book ‘Cesar Asar in the Planet of the Noses,’ a collection of his cartoons and short stories, was published in 2008.

CHOP-CHOPPED FIRST LADY + CHOP-CHOPPED FIRST DAUGHTER
Dir. Yason Banal, 2005
Philippines, 1 min. 54 sec.

A tongue-in-cheek poke at our own culture and recent history. The First Lady is none other than Imelda Marcos, the First Daughter none other than Kris Aquino. Both women’s lives and antics juxtaposed with gory evocations of the highly-publicized chop-chop lady murders that were exploited by those 90s slasher films Aquino herself starred in.

*This was piece was last shown as a 2channel video installation at the Ateneo Art Gallery (AAG), and is reformatted as split screen for the purposes of this screening program, with kind permission from the artist and AAG.

Yason Banal studied Film at the University of the Philippines and Fine Art at Goldsmiths College-University of London. He has exhibited widely in Manila and abroad at the Tate, Frieze Art Fair, Guangzhou Triennale, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, AIT Tokyo, Singapore Biennale, Oslo Kunsthall, Christie’s, IFA Berlin, Shanghai Biennale and Queens Museum of Art.

THE RETROCHRONOLOGICAL TRANSFER OF INFORMATION
Dir. Tad Ermitaño, 1994
Philippines, 9 min. 33 sec.

Less a documentary than a marvelous if irreverent parody of science fiction films. A humorous meditation on time, politics, and point of view in cinema. Hoping to send a message back in time by equipping the camera to shoot through Rizal’s portrait on Philippine money, Ermitano plays with the boundaries of different points of view: Rizal’s, that of Philippine politics, the camera’s, the filmmaker’s, and ours—as well as with the temporal relations between them.

Tad Ermitano studied biology at the University of Hiroshima, philosophy at the University of the Philippines, trained in film and video at MFI, and was co-founder of pioneering multimedia collective Children of Cathode Ray.

ARS COLONIA
Dir. Raya Martin, 2011
Philippines, 1 min. 13 sec.

A conquistador counts his blessings in this hand-colored effigy evoking old, silent war iconography. Commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2011, it screened before all films supported by IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund.

Raya Martin has more than a dozen films to his credit: an ambitious, constantly evolving body of work consisting of fiction features, documentaries, shorts, and installations. Martin draws on a wide array of sources—combining pop culture references, archival material, and avant-garde structuralism—in his radically lyrical works. This daring, restless filmmaker with a sensibility all his own suggests entirely new ways of approaching film, personal, and national history.

CLASS PICTURE
Dir. Tito & Tita, 2012
Philippines, 4 min. 41 sec.

Shot on a single roll of expired 16mm film, this ‘photography film’ injects evokes faded memories and injects lyricism and humor into the archetypal class picture, alongside the fleeting sound of waves crashing on a beach.

Tito & Tita (Manila, Philippines) is a collective of young artists working mainly with film and photography via a variation of experimental techniques. As individual filmmakers, their works have been featured in various film festivals and art fairs. As a collective, they have exhibited in Manila, Singapore, and Tokyo.

ANITO
Dir. Martha Atienza, 2012
Philippines/Netherlands, 8 min. 8 sec.

An animistic festival Christianized and incorporated into Folk Catholicism slowly turns into modern day madness. A tragicomic portrait of a small island town whose livelihood is deeply rooted in and bound to the sea.

Martha Atienza lives and works in the Netherlands and the Philippines. Her works are sociological in nature, reflecting a keen observation of her direct environment. Atienza understands her surroundings as a landscape of people first and foremost.

HINDI SA ATIN ANG BUWAN
Aka THE MOON IS NOT OURS
Dir. Jon Lazam, 2011
Philippines, 3 min. 31 sec.

Travel footage from a family holiday on the island of Bohol, Philippines, is captured in black and white, without sound, on a basic video camera, in this contemplative piece on lost love, distance, resignation and sadness.

Jon Lazam is an experimental filmmaker based in Manila. His works have screened abroad in Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Montreal, Paris and San Francisco. His most recent work, Pantomime For Figures Shrouded By Waves, premiered at the Sharjah Biennial, and won Best Short Film at the Cinemanila International Film Festival.

KALAWANG
Aka RUST
Dir. Cesar Hernando, Eli Guieb III & Jimbo Albano, 1989
Philippines, 6 min. 33 sec.

One of the most prominent and well-crafted films that emerged from the Christoph Janetzko experimental film workshops, Kalawang is a satirical piece that uses found footage of war, sex, and pop culture to unpick the cultural and libidinal complex of colonization.

Cesar Hernando is a filmmaker and one of Philippine cinema’s best production designers, having contributed to films of Mike De Leon, Ishmael Bernal, and Lav Diaz. Eli Guieb III is a filmmaker and award-winning fiction writer. Jimbo Albano is an artist and editorial illustrator for BusinessMirror and Philippines Graphic Magazine.

This program would be impossible to put together without the kind support of the individual artists, the Mowelfund Film Institute, UP College of Mass Communications, UP Film Institute, Ateneo Art Gallery, Green Papaya Art Projects, Terminal Garden, and the National Film Archive of the Philippines.

The screening prints of the 8mm and 16mm films created in the 80s and 90s that are featured in the Kalampag Tracking Agency are mostly unavailable, missing or completely decomposed. Some of the lucky ones have negatives and/or preservation copies left. The screening versions of the older works in this screening program come from crude U-Matic, VHS and Betamax transfers. The curatorial team is still in the process of tracking down the surviving prints.

An expanded version of this program was previously shown at the University of the Philippines Film Institute, Green Papaya Art Projects, and EXiS Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, August–September 2014.